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You can learn more about this race here. These photos were from 2010. Looks like a damn goregeous place to sail.
A whale of a tale: Lang Walker’s stunning new 58-metre superyacht, Kokomo, shares the Whitsundays with a female humpback whale and calf during Audi Hamilton Island Race Week 2010. (photo Andrea Francolini/AUDI)
"Audi Hamilton Island Race Week: There’s possibly no better place to race in the world than the Whitsundays, or better venue for a regatta than Hamilton Island.
Had a great weekend down at the Annapolis School of Seamanship, taking their Basic Diesel course. For those of you who have followed this blog for a while, you will know that I have a mistrust, nay a loathing of engines. Why? Well, truth be told, I just don't know the first thing about them. Put it this way, a friend asked me recently how many cylinders my engine had and I stared at him embarassed and said 3 or 4.
Now that we are in possession of a boat with a large'ish Diesel engine (a Westerbeke 33HP), I figured it was time to learn how the damn things work. I found the Annapolis School of Seamanship online and I figured, that they had a nice web site, a great name and a nice-looking 2-day course on marine diesel engines so I signed up.
It did not disappoint. In fact, it was one of the best courses I have taken. They break the course down into four well-structured modules, mixing up how marine diesel engines work, taking an engine apart, trouble-shooting, hands-on fixing stuff and problems-solving. They also provided Nigel Calder's Marine Diesel Engines as course reading material.
The two instructors were excellent: John, a very experienced skipper provided the operator''s perspective and Scott (pictured here), a professional mechanic brought more-in-depth knowledge. Scott had a permanent patient but slightly weary look on his face and John had some great stories often about cock-ups he had been involved in. This format worked well.
The class of 16 were mostly experienced sailors and motor-boaters who made for a good discussion, great questions and some good break-time chatter about boats and places to sail.
Twenty five pages of notes later and a permanent smell of diesel on my hands, I have gone from clue-less to having a clue. Certainly not an expert and I will no doubt forget most of what I learned before the season starts but I feel like I have an platform to build on. Well, at least when I write checks to fix stuff in future I will know what I am paying for. Hey, who knows I might even fix some stuff myself.
PS: The subject of this post is how you remember the stages of a 4-stroke engine, i.e. air is sucked into the cylinder then squeezed (compressed), heating it up; as fuel is injected into the compressed and hot air it goes bang (combustion) and out is blows (exhausts).
According to their web site...
"Now on its 39th year, the Iloilo Paraw Regatta is the oldest traditional craft event in Asia, and the largest sailing event in the Philippines. The Iloilo Paraw Regatta Foundation currently organizes the activities, with leading support from the Iloilo City and Provincial Governments and the Department of Tourism, along with private sector donations.
Activities have been expanded to spread over a week. On the Saturday of the climactic weekend there is slalom racing on a course by the beach to facilitate crowd participation. On the Sunday, the thirty-kilometer distance race is sailed on a course in the Iloilo Strait, running up the coast of Panay and then down the coast of Guimaras, before returning to the finish at Villa Beach. Participant exposure to the events is in the tens of thousands.
The geophysical shape of the Iloilo Strait provides year round breezes. Thus the working sailboat still predominates. In these times of high fuel costs, and polluting oil spills, one can appreciate the simple ecology of the traditional paraw. Nevertheless, the skills needed to sail are far more complex.
The objective of the Regatta is to celebrate the skills of the paraw sailors, and bring a fiesta spirit into their lives. And with the colorful painted sails, this spirit is brought into the lives of participants and tourists as well."
Very good article in Yachtingworld on the dangers of piracy in the Indian Ocean.
A friend today asked me why the navies of the world could not deal with the issue. When one realizes that the high risk area is 1.4 million square miles, the answer is pretty clear. The area is too big to control with the current deployed resources. It would take a massive coordinated effort between the navies of major nations and this would undermine anything else these navies are engaged in.
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